CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Nora crammed in the last mouthful of her chicken sandwich dinner, and snatched open the door. She’d expected Anna.
It wasn’t Anna.
Gabe Sterling loomed in the doorway, hands shoved in his pockets, broad shoulders rounded and tight.
He didn’t say anything, just waited for her to chew and swallow her food. Premature. The sandwich fought back. Waving him in, she rushed to wash it down with the glass of Diet Coke on the table by her plate.
“I’m not staying,” Gabe said from the doorway.
She was surprised he hadn’t ambled in and made himself at home on her couch by now.
Pulling a hand out of his pocket, he held something out to her. “Got this for you.”
Nora took it. “My cell phone.” She turned it over in astonishment. “You fixed it? You’re a wizard!”
He gave her a revolted look. “I’m not a wizard. If anything, I’m a mage. A warrior mage. With a credit card. It’s a new phone.”
“You don’t like wizards?”
“At the risk of revealing myself, once again, to be out of step with the world, no. I fucking hate wizards.”
“But you like mages?” Nora leaned against the doorjamb. “What’s the difference?”
“Mages are badass. They don’t need wands.”
“Do you want to come inside?”
“Yeah.”
Nora stepped back. Gabe remained in the doorway. “I thought you wanted to come in?” she said.
“Want to. Not going to. I’m not good company right now.”
“I’m guessing that this—” she tried to give him the phone back, “—isn’t going to improve your mood.”
He watched her push the phone against his chest but made no move to take it.
“I can’t let you give me expensive gifts,” Nora said. “No laptops. No cell phones.”
Gabe wrapped his fingers around her wrist when she tried to slip it into his pocket. “Nora. It’s not a gift. It’s an apology. A replacement for the one I broke.”
She opened her mouth to argue.
“Don’t,” he growled. “Don’t argue with me. Not you, too.”
“Okay.” She felt weird accepting it. Then again he probably felt weird for breaking her old phone in the first place.
Gabe always threw off a huge amount of energy, the air snapping and crackling around him. Tonight, though, it felt different. It felt dangerous. Uncontained. Like a storm front spreading in.
Sunshine wandered over to see who their visitor was, and leaned against Nora’s legs. Struck with an idea, Nora asked him, “Are you busy? Do you have an hour or so to spare?”
“No.”
“I’m going to pretend I heard yes.” She reached for the hooks behind the door and took down Sunshine’s leash. She held it out to him. “Do me a favor and take Sunshine for her evening walk?”
Gabe took the leash and examined it. “Pink?” he said.
“Sunshine likes pink.”
“I don’t like pink.”
Nora smiled up at him. “I don’t care. Are you taking her for a walk or not? Because she’s all excited now.” She crouched beside Sunshine, who was on her butt, sweeping the floor with her tail while her front paws shifted in a dance of glee. “Do you want Uncle Gabe to take you for a walk? Yes, you do. Don’t you? Yes, you do.”
“I don’t like Uncle Gabe,” he said, looking down at them. “You can call me Daddy.”
Nora shot him a narrow-eyed look. “You’d better be talking to the dog right now.”
He grinned. “Are you coming with us?” He bent and clipped the leash to Sunshine’s collar. She jumped up and started bumping into his legs in an effort to get him out the door and on with the important business of walkies.
“Can’t,” Nora said. “I’m busy. Which is why you showing up is great timing.”
“Busy, huh?”
No, but her going for a walk wasn’t the point.
Lines of tension radiated from the corners of Gabe’s eyes, and his jaw was tight. His shoulders had loosened a fraction, but not enough. The grin had already faded.
“Thanks for this,” she said. “See you later.” She pushed him out and shut the door on them.
Gabe’s voice came through the wood. “Got any of those poop baggies?”
Nora hauled the door open, thrust a couple of baggies at him, and shut it in his face again. “Bye.”
They were gone an hour and a half, and by the time they got back, he’d relaxed. Not a whole lot, but he wasn’t humming with tension anymore. As she’d hoped, spending time with the peaceful Sunshine had evened him out.
Her great idea had also backfired, because Sunshine was now the proud owner of a new and expensive dark brown leather leash and matching collar they had apparently driven off to the nearest pet megastore to buy.
And Gabe informed her that he’d decided to rent her dog.
“You can’t rent my dog,” she told him.
He sucked in a breath and locked eyes with Sunshine. She gave a gentle woof. He screwed up his face and sighed in defeat. “You win. I’ll buy her off you.”
Nora gaped at him. “No! She’s not for sale. And you can’t commit to a houseplant, remember?”
“I know that. But if you won’t let me rent her, then I have to buy her.”
“If you want a dog, adopt one of your own.”
“I want this one. She gets me. Look.” He pointed down to where Sunshine had draped herself over his boots. “I think I’m ready to take a chance and make a commitment. I want your dog.”
“No.”
“I can convince you. I’m good at negotiating.”
Nora had the idea that Gabe Sterling’s version of negotiating wasn’t like most people’s. She thought it would be less of a delicate give-and-take to reach mutual satisfaction, and more of a barbarian conqueror lays waste to his enemies and rides off into the wilderness with the spoils of war situation.
“What are you thinking about, Nora?” Gabe’s eyes were on her face, fascinated.
Her cheeks heated. No way was she going to tell him. “When I said you can’t rent her, I meant you don’t have to rent her. You can borrow her.”
“Any time I want?”
“Any time you want. As long as you look after her, and you give her back.”
~ ~ ~
“Let me get this straight,” Anna said the next morning. “He shows up with a new cell phone…and somehow he leaves with your dog?”
“He didn’t leave with Sunshine. I dropped her off at the warehouse this morning. He’s borrowing her.”
Anna rifled through Nora’s purse and found her phone. “Yeah. Watch him. The dog is just the start. He’s going to take everything you’ve got, Nora, if you don’t set some boundaries.”
“I’m not sure he recognizes boundaries.”
“He’s the type of guy to go looking for boundaries, just for the fun of tearing them down. But that’s my humble opinion. What do I know?”
“I don’t have to worry about him breaching my boundaries. No sparks, remember?”
Anna rolled her eyes. “Whatever.” She waggled the phone at Nora. “I’m disappointed with this piece of crap. He couldn’t stretch for an iPhone?”
“I don’t want an iPhone, and he didn’t break an iPhone. He said he got the closest he could to my old one, ‘to save my fussin’.”
“Fussin’?”
“That’s what he said.”
Anna flipped the phone open. “He set himself as the wallpaper and the camera is filled with dick pics, am I right?”
“Ew. No. He left the wallpaper on the factory setting. He did take some photos, though.” Nora waited to say the last bit until she’d taken the phone back.
Anna squawked and swiped for it. “I want to see!”
“They’re not dick pics.”
The pictures had puzzled her, and she’d spent a good hour scrolling through them. She already knew she’d scroll through them a few more times.
Few hundred.
“What are they pictures of, then?” Anna asked.
Nora blushed. “Kittens.”
“What?”
“Yeah. Funny internet cat photos. Kittens.”
“He filled the camera roll with photos of kittens.”
“I think it’s a joke.”
He hadn’t filled it. There were only a few photos, and they weren’t of kittens. They were of his tattoos.
Nora didn’t quite understand the meaning behind the photos. She didn’t know if there even was any meaning, beyond the fact he knew his tats knocked her stupid. She hadn’t asked him, and she had no plans to.
She also had no plans to delete them. She’d learned that particular lesson.
Whatever was going on in Gabe’s life that was stressing him out, he seemed to be getting it under control. That, or hanging out with Sunshine was as effective for his stress-management as Nora had hoped.
He had Sunshine with him at his office every day for a full week, and apart from when Nora dropped her off at his warehouse in the morning and Gabe dropped her back at Nora’s apartment in the evening, she didn’t see much of him.
He must have been serious when he’d said there were no sparks between them.
Which made it all the more unfortunate that the fire he’d lit inside her kept on raging.